Franklin & Marshall College is a private liberal arts college in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, known for its rigorous academics, engaged student body, and vibrant campus life. With a wide-ranging audience that includes prospective students, alumni, parents, and athletics fans, its digital presence is a key part of community-building and institutional storytelling.
Tim Brixius, Digital and Social Media Strategist, has been at the heart of that connection for over a decade. What began as a role focused on content execution has evolved into one of strategic orchestration. Today, he manages all active social profiles and supports multiple departments helping them tell their stories while maintaining a unified institutional voice.
From Fragmented to Focused: A College’s Digital Reboot
At Franklin & Marshall College, social media is more than outreach; it’s a bridge between communities. From prospective students and parents to alumni and athletics fans, every post is an opportunity to build belonging.
But coordinating content across 13 profiles, 10 users, and multiple departments, including student workers, was becoming unmanageable. The college’s legacy platform, Sprout Social, no longer fit the scale or strategy they needed.
“We were using Sprout Social but the cost just didn’t match the value anymore, especially for a team as distributed and diverse as ours.”
— Tim Brixius, Digital and Social Media Strategist, Franklin & Marshall College
The Switch to Agorapulse: Centralizing Strategy Without Losing Voice
The primary challenge was aligning multiple stakeholders across admissions, alumni, athletics, and student groups on a single social media platform that could meet their diverse needs. Each group required better workflows, clearer visibility into content, and a system that could accommodate varying levels of user expertise. After evaluating several tools, Agorapulse emerged as the ideal choice, offering not just robust publishing capabilities but also a unique balance of structure and flexibility that made collaboration seamless across departments.
Agorapulse enabled Franklin & Marshall to:
- Assign clear roles to team members (staff and students)
- Set up approval workflows that match real campus processes
- Maintain brand consistency across channels without micro-managing
- Use collaborative planning calendars to foster visibility, not confusion
“With Agorapulse, we can give each team, from Athletics to Alumni Relations, their own space to create, while still keeping oversight from the top. It’s transformed how we work together.”
Collaborative Publishing That Scales Without Slowing Down
Publishing at scale used to mean copy-pasting and endless versioning across platforms. Now, thanks to Agorapulse’s unified composer and platform-specific customization, Tim and his team save 10 to 15 hours each week by streamlining how a single post becomes tailored content across Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more.
“A blog post might become four tailored posts for four audiences, all managed in one place. All that time saved makes it a real shift from reaction to strategy.”
Agorapulse’s AI tools also play a key role, helping with:
- Accessibility: Automatically generating alt text for images to ensure inclusivity
- Content Variety: Writing copy variations to suit different audience tones
- Discoverability: Suggesting relevant hashtags to boost visibility
“I showed the AI alt text feature in a team meeting; it’s the kind of smart use of AI that actually helps, not just adds noise.”
Reporting That Drives Strategy, Not Just Recaps Performance
Before using Agorapulse, reporting was often disconnected from the day-to-day publishing process and offered limited strategic value. With Agorapulse, Franklin & Marshall College has built a custom reporting workflow that does more than summarize results — it informs strategy.
“I’ve built custom reports that focus on the metrics that matter most and I now use those in monthly strategy meetings to track what’s working.”
Rather than just presenting engagement numbers, the team uses reporting to draw meaningful comparisons across time periods, such as tracking content performance from one Commencement season to the next. With Google Analytics integrated, they also monitor how social media contributes to broader objectives like campus visits and application conversions.
This structured use of data helps validate creative decisions, optimize timing, and justify investments, turning social media from a service function into a performance-driven asset.
The Numbers Behind the Story
Franklin & Marshall didn’t just feel the difference — they measured it.
- 10–15 hours saved weekly on content management
- 36.9% increase in mentions on their main Instagram (Q3 vs. Q2 2025)
- 9.8% increase in organic reach (Q3 vs. Q2 2025)
- 55% engagement growth on alumni-focused pages (6 months post-Agorapulse switch)
- Athletics pages (H1 2025 vs. previous 6 months):
- 25% increase in mentions
- 11% increase in engagement
- 4% follower growth
Onboarding, Support and Trust
Agorapulse’s onboarding helped the Franklin & Marshall team feel confident quickly, even student workers.
“The onboarding was simple. But what really impressed me is how proactive the support is. Even when I forgot I’d reported something, they followed up with a fix.”
Quarterly check-ins with the Agorapulse Customer Success team help the college surface underused features, measure success, and evolve their use of the platform.
A System That Scales With Complexity
Franklin & Marshall’s social media presence involves a mix of professional staff and student workers, each needing different levels of access and oversight. With Agorapulse, they’ve created workflows that accommodate this complexity without sacrificing speed or control.
“Approval flows and shared calendars have made brand consistency so much easier, even across different voices like athletics or alumni teams.”
Rather than enforce rigid control, the platform enables each group to operate confidently within a shared framework. The result is faster execution, fewer errors, and a stronger, more unified institutional voice — one that still respects the nuances of each audience.
Franklin & Marshall’s story shows how Agorapulse supports:
- Decentralized content creation with centralized oversight
- Seamless collaboration across staff, students, and departments
- Platform-native publishing at scale
- Strategic, data-informed growth rather than guesswork
“For any institution managing a multi-stakeholder presence, Agorapulse is a no-brainer. It’s the structure and flexibility we needed, and the support to match.”
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Frequently Asked Questions
How does Franklin & Marshall manage social media collaboration across departments?
Franklin & Marshall uses Agorapulse to coordinate 10 users and 13 profiles across departments like athletics, advancement, and admissions. Shared calendars and approval workflows allow each team to manage their own content while maintaining brand consistency and strategic alignment.
Why did Franklin & Marshall switch from Sprout Social to Agorapulse?
Sprout Social no longer met the college’s needs in terms of value and workflow flexibility. Agorapulse offered better ROI, easier collaboration, and more intuitive tools — especially for a team made up of both professional staff and student workers.
How does Agorapulse support accessibility and content variety for Franklin & Marshall?
The team uses Agorapulse’s AI features to generate alt text for images and create multiple versions of post copy tailored to different tones and platforms. This ensures accessibility and content relevance without increasing workload.
